Singular and Plural

Ideologies of Linguistic Authority in 21st Century Catalonia

Kathryn A. Woolard

Description

A vibrant and surprisingly powerful civic and political movement for an independent Catalonia has brought renewed urgency to questions about what it means, personally and politically, to speak or not to speak Catalan and to claim Catalan identity. In this book, Kathryn Woolard develops a framework for analyzing ideologies of linguistic authority and uses it to illuminate the politics of language in Spain and Catalonia, where Catalan jostles with Castilian for legitimacy. Longitudinal research across decades of political autonomy contextualizes this ethnographic study of the social meaning of Catalan in the 21st century. Part I lays out the ideologies of linguistic authenticity, anonymity, and naturalism that typically underpin linguistic authority in the modern western world, and gives an overview of a shift in the ideological grounding of linguistic authority in contemporary Catalonia. Part II examines discourses in the media surrounding three public linguistic controversies: an immigrant president's linguistic competence, a municipal festival, and an international book fair. Part III explores individuals' linguistic practices and views, drawing on classroom ethnographies and interviews with two generations of young people from the same high school. The book argues that there is an ongoing shift at both public and personal levels away from the ethnolinguistic authenticity that powered relations in the early transition to political autonomy, and toward new discourses of anonymity, rooted cosmopolitanism, and authenticity understood as a project rather than a matter of origins and essence. This shift is reflected in the current sovereignty movement.

Singular and Plural

Ideologies of Linguistic Authority in 21st Century Catalonia

Kathryn A. Woolard

Author Information

Kathryn Woolard is a linguistic anthropologist and a professor of anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. Woolard is author of Double Talk: Bilingualism and the Politics of Ethnicity in Catalonia (Stanford 1989, reissued 2015) and co-editor of Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory (Oxford, 1998) and Languages and Publics: The Making of Authority (St. Jerome 2001; Routledge 2014). She is past president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Singular and Plural

Ideologies of Linguistic Authority in 21st Century Catalonia

Kathryn A. Woolard

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the Ramon Llull International Prize. Winner of the 2017 Society for Linguistic Anthropology Edward Sapir Book Prize.

"Woolard's study provides a rich seam of analysis to consider the changing dynamics of status, role and perception of Catalonia's two languages: Catalan and Castilian." --Andrew Dowling, Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies

Singular and Plural

Ideologies of Linguistic Authority in 21st Century Catalonia

Kathryn A. Woolard

From Our Blog

The Catalan sovereignty movement came to a head on 1 October 2017 in a beleaguered referendum declared illegal by the Spanish government, which sent in thousands of police and civil guard troops, used force against would-be voters, confiscated ballot boxes, and jailed civic leaders and elected officials on charges of sedition. The political crisis for the Spanish state as well as Catalonia continues.